Canly Inc. (Headquarters: Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo; Representatives: Mamoru Tatsumi / Yutaro Akiyama; hereinafter "Canly") is pleased to announce that software architect Junichi Kato, known as a leading expert in Domain-Driven Design (DDD), has joined the company as an "AI Fellow." As our services become more feature-rich and large-scale, Mr. Kato's participation will drive bold reforms towards an AI-first development system and strengthen our system design for long-term growth, further solidifying the technical foundation of our engineering organization. Background of Appointment Under the mission "To build global infrastructure that supports store management," Canly is rapidly expanding its business domains by developing multiple products, including "Canly Store Customer Acquisition," "Canly Employee Benefits," and "Canly Local Inventory." In November 2025, we will refresh our vision to "Increase store customer acquisition power with the power of people and AI," marking the beginning of a "second founding period" focused on transforming store management itself. With the spread of generative AI changing user search behavior and the diversification of products increasing system complexity, a robust software design foundation is essential to fundamentally realize Canly's goals of "company-wide social implementation of AI" and "transition to next-generation development processes." Therefore, we have invited Mr. Kato, who possesses top-tier domestic expertise in AI-driven development, based on his experience with large-scale distributed system architectures such as DDD, Event Sourcing, and CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation). He will primarily drive the transformation of our technical organization, focusing on the following three points: 1. Fusion of AI x Engineering We will boldly transform the utilization of the latest AI technologies, currently led by CAIO Hagino, from mere feature additions into "AI-driven development" that forms the core of product developm